ULAANBAATAR, OCT 23 (DNA) – Ten climbers who ignored a ban on ascending Mongolia s Mount Otgontenger have been killed by an avalanche while seven others are still missing, rescue services said Monday. The Mongolian nationals have been missing since Sunday after reaching the peak of the 4,021-metre (13,192 foot) mountain. The bodies were found at a lower altitude of 3,400 metres. The group was made up of four women and 13 men aged 30 to 50, and it is unclear who among them are still missing.

MADRID, OCT 17 (DNA) –  A Spanish court has ordered two powerful Catalan separatists to be detained, threatening a further escalation of the political crisis on Tuesday as both sides refuse to budge in their high-stakes standoff over the region’s independence bid. Protests broke out in Catalonia’s capital Barcelona on Monday as news spread that Jordi Cuixart and Jordi Sanchez were being kept behind bars on sedition charges. The pair are the leaders of pro-independence citizens’ groups Omnium Cultural and the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) respectively, both of which count tens of thousands of members and have emerged as key players in the Catalonia crisis.

TOKYO, OCT 14 (DNA) – An elderly penguin who shot to fame in Japan after falling in love with a cardboard cut-out of a cartoon character has died, at the ripe old age of 21. Officials at Tobu zoo in Saitama, north of Tokyo, said Grape passed away after a brief illness with the object of his desire right by his side. He would have been around 80 in human years. Earlier this year, the Humboldt penguin became smitten with a cut-out of Hululu — a character from the Japanese anime “Kemono Friends” — after being dumped by his former mate, a female called Midori. A love-sick Grape found solace in Hululu and would stare at her for hours on end.

Tokyo’s popular governor Yuriko Koike launched a bitter attack on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe Tuesday as the gloves came off for the official start of a snap election campaign in the world’s third-largest economy. Conservative premier Abe, 63, is facing an unexpected and fierce challenge from the media-savvy Koike, who has upended the sleepy world of Japanese politics with her upstart “Party of Hope.” Addressing hundreds of commuters at a busy Tokyo station via loudspeaker, Koike called on supporters to “end the politics of Abe,” lashing out at the long-serving premier over recent scandals that have weighed on his popularity.

NEW YORK, OCT 08 (DNA) – In a memorandum submitted to the secretary general of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, the former prime minister of Azad Kashmir, Barrister Sultan Mehmood Choudhary, and the secretary general of the World Kashmir Awareness Forum, Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, urged the United Nations to play the leadership card in resolving the 70-year-old Kashmir conflict. The memorandum read that the Kashmir conflict is perhaps the most dangerous conflict in the world, because of the spiraling nuclear and missile race between India and Pakistan, coupled with historical enmities that have occasioned three wars between the two rivals.